Remembering Student Practices
Regardless of how a place is set up, the everyday inhabitants of that place generate their own uses. The now classic theorization of this dynamic comes from Michel de Certeau. In The Practice of Every Life (1984), de Certeau characterizes this a dynamic between "strategy" and "tactics." Strategy is a place-making force of those in power. For de Certeau, strategy establishes official places that can be maintained and defended by those who have institutional authority over them. Tactics, however, are the everyday practices of those who inhabit places set up by those in power. These tactics can align with power, but often they resist, contest, or re-signify places of power as places of tactics, where those who do not have the power to control the places they inhabit make space for their own inhabitations, however temporarily.
Sometimes, as is the case with student practices around the Cullen Tower, Monstrance, and Story Tree, the institution appropriates these resistive practices into its own place-making processes, which creates a tension around who owns the practice.
The entries in this theme are about how Southwestern students, past and present, have resisted, contested, or re-signified the places established by the adults in charge of them to create their own authentic practices, and how this process is always entangled in larger cultural dynamics around power. and place.
Stepping on the Seal
Southwestern's storied Seal contains a few more stories than most people realize.
Right in front of the Lois Perkins Chapel, you are faced with a large representation of the Southwestern University seal embedded in the sidewalk. This space is surrounded by bushes that almost encapsulate the seal in this space, making it feel like a sacred space of its own.
Now, if you are a…
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The Cullen Tower as Memory Place
When a resistive place-making practice by students becomes institutionally condoned, whose memory place is it?
The Cullen Tower holds a significant position as a memory place at Southwestern as it is part of one of the oldest buildings on campus, currently referred to as the Roy and Lillie Cullen building. Since the building’s completion in the spring of 1900, the Tower has cemented itself as an icon of…
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"Monstrance for a Grey Horse"
In just a few years after it appeared on campus, this enigmatic sculpture has become a good-luck charm and object of worship for many Southwestern students.
"Monstrance for a Grey Horse," now known simply as “Monstrance” by students, is a hallmark of any current Southwestern campus tour, and an important cultural touchstone for current student life.
All throughout the school year, but especially during exam and holiday seasons, students…
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Story Tree
Whose place is it?
Though the university has incorporated it into the institution’s recognized traditions, Story Tree remains largely “owned,” used, and perpetuated by the students. The student body originally made the tree their own and continues to remake it as their own by proliferating new practices. Through various offerings and hidden practices, students consistently reinforce this site as a place of…
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Brown Challenge Fountain
A shrine to fundraising at Southwestern, claimed by students for a different purpose.
During late 1996, an announcement was made to the Southwestern campus that by Spring 1997, there would be a new fountain built on the Academic Mall. The main reason for building the fountain was to commemorate the impact of the Brown Challenge, a twenty-year grant established by the Brown…
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